Now, you just pop in the disk and play - no driver updates and no configuration.
So what about bugs in the console games? One magazine I get has a monthly section on console game bugs. We still don't know how to make bug free software and console games are getting bigger and more complicated which means more bugs.
The games could download bug fixes, but then require somewhere to store them...
Also add in that Microsoft pretty much disbanded their IE team for several years, so that meant there was no improved competition for Firefox. If Microsoft had continued to work on IE (adding tabs, anti-popup, more security etc) then I wonder how much market Firefox would have now.
I bought my Mac Mini at the end of January when they were announced at Macworld, along with Tiger (ie 3 months ago), which is why I also asked the Apple rep about upgrades. The Up-To-Date program only covers people who purchased a Mac two weeks before Tiger came out.
It is a surprise. When I ordered my Mini, I spoke to someone from Apple. They claimed to be an Apple employee in Austin. I specifically asked them what the upgrade price would be for someone buying a Mac Mini and he said $20. 3 months later it turns out the truth is $130. I wouldn't have bought the system until now if I had known that would be the case.
I do accept code from anyone. But like most open source projects, there are large numbers of users requesting things, way fewer who say they will do something, and even fewer than that who actually do so. Doing official releases is an even more thankless task - they are fairly frequent and should include all the optional components.
I use my Mac to develop open source software. The operating system dictates what features I can code against, and what platforms I can produce binaries for.
My original plan was to have half the disk for 10.3 and half for 10.4. When I got the Mac mini I made both partitions and had the 10.4 partition empty till now.
Since I am not going to get 10.4 now, I'll be putting Linux on that partition instead.
I will not be replacing Panther. I will just have both Panther and Linux. Ultimately this will benefit PPC Linux users and be to the detriment of 10.4 users who would like 10.4 features supported. I also have no idea if the 10.3 binaries I produce work on 10.4. (Yes I know they should, but my project is written in several different programming languages, uses some language components from the OS and some from 3rd parties, has hooks into the USB subsystem etc etc).
What you missed from my post is that I already have OS X 10.3 on my machine and had reserved half of the disk space for 10.4. But since Apple wants 25% of the system price from 3 months ago for 10.4, I'll be putting Linux on that partition instead (ie I will have both 10.3 and Linux).
There are those of us who bought a mini 3 months ago and don't think that forking out 25% of the original system price for 10.4 is reasonable. So I am going to put Linux on that partition I reserved for 10.4 instead.
You also forgot to add how just about every online retailer starts demanding that you "create an account" before you can actually give them your money. I almost always walk away at that point since there are very few places I am going to buy from regularly. And the irregular places will have the opportunity to sell my details or lose them to crackers just for the sake of one transaction.
Forget price comparisons (which I look at last). What I look for is if the store actually knows what it is they are selling. If there is just some random model number and insufficient specs then I won't go near them (they won't know if a product is defective, recommend alternatives or actually care about the sale etc). On the other hand if they include online versions of the product manual, detailed specifications, good and bad reviews etc then I'll be way happier to spend a few bucks more.
Amazon used to have that good karma. They had pretty good information, reviews etc and although not the cheapest usually gave good value. Then they pulled all those privacy and pricing stunts...
The number one question asked by 'the archetypical mini-buyer' - and of course the tons of other people that ask for a mini who sometimes have some similarity with this mythical person - is 'Will I get Tiger for free when I but my mini now?'
That is exactly what I asked on the day they came out when I bought mine. The Apple person on the phone said Tiger would be free or $20.
We'll take this slowly. For DRM reasons, Apple won't provide the audio data as anything other than their DRM aac format. If you want it as an MP3, you have to do the following steps:
Create a playlist (there are various restrictions on playlists)
Write to an audio CD (there are various restrictions on writing to CDs)
Use a different program to convert the audio CD back into MP3
There is no technical reason why Apple couldn't provide the data in MP3 format as well. Instead they make you go through the hoops above. The "various restrictions" have been getting more and more restrictive over time, and I have no doubt that one day they'll prevent the above completely.
Actually you can't burn any of their music. My car stereo will play MP3 CDs. Apple won't provide that format, and instead you have to write out to audio cd and then re-rip as MP3. There are all sorts of limits on how and how often you can burn. This is very noticeable.
DRM has exactly one function, and it is a negative one at that. It is to prevent usage under various circumstances.
My site, which is primarily visited for a cellphone FAQ has 70.5% IE and 18.8% Firefox this month. In November last year it was 77% IE and 11.3 Firefox. In July last year it was 79.4% IE and 6.2% Firefox.
Tell them that you are happy to give them the rights to prior work if they pay for it and put a price down. For the four line field, what I put is "various works identified as copyright by me".
And what about those of us that bought a Mac Mini earlier this year? Having to spend 26% of what we spent two months ago to get the upgrade won't go down well.
They threatened to do that once. The tax industry which rakes in something like $8bn a year had a fit, and the compromise reached was that the IRS wouldn't do free software and in return the tax industry would do preparation and filing for low income people for free.
Just like music and film, there is a fairly monopolistic industry that will fight to preserve their business model. And they can afford to spend a lot more on bribing, err I mean lobbying, what passes for democratic govenrment.
It would be bad PR for the store to point out the real reason. Having to have two employees in on the scam makes it harder. (They would have to trust each other more, more people to keep secrets, proceeds split across more people etc).
The vast majority of store losses, known as shrinkage, is by employees. This is one measure the stores have to reduce it. Unless you know of a good source of impeccably honest people who work for low wages, there will always be some theft going on. You have the choice of not shopping at the store. And as some posters pointed out, they don't get upset if you just walk out.
You can also open your own store with your own policies.
There is a huge misunderstanding of the door check thing. It isn't to catch crooked customers. It is to catch crooked employees. If it wasn't there, an employee could team up with someone and as they go through the checkout go through the motions of scanning some items, but not actually do so. Those items can then be resold outside the store and it would be almost impossible to detect this happening.
The person at the door is there to check that every item has been rung up. Electronics stores do have a lot of small items that cost large amounts of money making the above scam easy to perpetrate. They may also catch extraordinarily stupid shoplifters but that isn't the goal.
So how re-assured would you feel if they had signs at the door saying the purpose is to catch crooked employees?
I do the complete opposite. When I buy CDs, I don't even listen to it on the CD. I rip it to MP3 and throw away the cover, song lyrics and other crud. The CDs are all stored on spindles that blank CD-R discs come on.
For what my housemate buys me on iTunes, I write it to audio cd, and then rip back into MP3.
Slashdot Mirror
So what about bugs in the console games? One magazine I get has a monthly section on console game bugs. We still don't know how to make bug free software and console games are getting bigger and more complicated which means more bugs.
The games could download bug fixes, but then require somewhere to store them ...
Also add in that Microsoft pretty much disbanded their IE team for several years, so that meant there was no improved competition for Firefox. If Microsoft had continued to work on IE (adding tabs, anti-popup, more security etc) then I wonder how much market Firefox would have now.
I bought my Mac Mini at the end of January when they were announced at Macworld, along with Tiger (ie 3 months ago), which is why I also asked the Apple rep about upgrades. The Up-To-Date program only covers people who purchased a Mac two weeks before Tiger came out.
It is a surprise. When I ordered my Mini, I spoke to someone from Apple. They claimed to be an Apple employee in Austin. I specifically asked them what the upgrade price would be for someone buying a Mac Mini and he said $20. 3 months later it turns out the truth is $130. I wouldn't have bought the system until now if I had known that would be the case.
I do accept code from anyone. But like most open source projects, there are large numbers of users requesting things, way fewer who say they will do something, and even fewer than that who actually do so. Doing official releases is an even more thankless task - they are fairly frequent and should include all the optional components.
I use my Mac to develop open source software. The operating system dictates what features I can code against, and what platforms I can produce binaries for.
My original plan was to have half the disk for 10.3 and half for 10.4. When I got the Mac mini I made both partitions and had the 10.4 partition empty till now.
Since I am not going to get 10.4 now, I'll be putting Linux on that partition instead.
I will not be replacing Panther. I will just have both Panther and Linux. Ultimately this will benefit PPC Linux users and be to the detriment of 10.4 users who would like 10.4 features supported. I also have no idea if the 10.3 binaries I produce work on 10.4. (Yes I know they should, but my project is written in several different programming languages, uses some language components from the OS and some from 3rd parties, has hooks into the USB subsystem etc etc).
I already have several x86 based machines.
No, but I can't add dashboard or spotlight to my open source apps without 10.4. I don't care - it only affects the users of the software.
And adding Linux means I will also be able to release PPC Linux binaries.
I mostly use it to develop open source software.
What you missed from my post is that I already have OS X 10.3 on my machine and had reserved half of the disk space for 10.4. But since Apple wants 25% of the system price from 3 months ago for 10.4, I'll be putting Linux on that partition instead (ie I will have both 10.3 and Linux).
There are those of us who bought a mini 3 months ago and don't think that forking out 25% of the original system price for 10.4 is reasonable. So I am going to put Linux on that partition I reserved for 10.4 instead.
You also forgot to add how just about every online retailer starts demanding that you "create an account" before you can actually give them your money. I almost always walk away at that point since there are very few places I am going to buy from regularly. And the irregular places will have the opportunity to sell my details or lose them to crackers just for the sake of one transaction.
Forget price comparisons (which I look at last). What I look for is if the store actually knows what it is they are selling. If there is just some random model number and insufficient specs then I won't go near them (they won't know if a product is defective, recommend alternatives or actually care about the sale etc). On the other hand if they include online versions of the product manual, detailed specifications, good and bad reviews etc then I'll be way happier to spend a few bucks more.
...
Amazon used to have that good karma. They had pretty good information, reviews etc and although not the cheapest usually gave good value. Then they pulled all those privacy and pricing stunts
That is exactly what I asked on the day they came out when I bought mine. The Apple person on the phone said Tiger would be free or $20.
Nope, extrapolate the demonstrated trend.
We'll take this slowly. For DRM reasons, Apple won't provide the audio data as anything other than their DRM aac format. If you want it as an MP3, you have to do the following steps:
There is no technical reason why Apple couldn't provide the data in MP3 format as well. Instead they make you go through the hoops above. The "various restrictions" have been getting more and more restrictive over time, and I have no doubt that one day they'll prevent the above completely.
Actually you can't burn any of their music. My car stereo will play MP3 CDs. Apple won't provide that format, and instead you have to write out to audio cd and then re-rip as MP3. There are all sorts of limits on how and how often you can burn. This is very noticeable.
DRM has exactly one function, and it is a negative one at that. It is to prevent usage under various circumstances.
My site, which is primarily visited for a cellphone FAQ has 70.5% IE and 18.8% Firefox this month. In November last year it was 77% IE and 11.3 Firefox. In July last year it was 79.4% IE and 6.2% Firefox.
Tell them that you are happy to give them the rights to prior work if they pay for it and put a price down. For the four line field, what I put is "various works identified as copyright by me".
And what about those of us that bought a Mac Mini earlier this year? Having to spend 26% of what we spent two months ago to get the upgrade won't go down well.
They threatened to do that once. The tax industry which rakes in something like $8bn a year had a fit, and the compromise reached was that the IRS wouldn't do free software and in return the tax industry would do preparation and filing for low income people for free.
Just like music and film, there is a fairly monopolistic industry that will fight to preserve their business model. And they can afford to spend a lot more on bribing, err I mean lobbying, what passes for democratic govenrment.
There seems to be an assumption that Groove was a success. Joel gives us a lot of food for thought:
Platforms
www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/Platforms.html
Don't Let Architecture Astronauts Scare You
www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000018.html
Response from Groove
www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000011.html
It would be bad PR for the store to point out the real reason. Having to have two employees in on the scam makes it harder. (They would have to trust each other more, more people to keep secrets, proceeds split across more people etc).
The door check isn't perfect, it just makes things harder.
The vast majority of store losses, known as shrinkage, is by employees. This is one measure the stores have to reduce it. Unless you know of a good source of impeccably honest people who work for low wages, there will always be some theft going on. You have the choice of not shopping at the store. And as some posters pointed out, they don't get upset if you just walk out.
You can also open your own store with your own policies.
There is a huge misunderstanding of the door check thing. It isn't to catch crooked customers. It is to catch crooked employees. If it wasn't there, an employee could team up with someone and as they go through the checkout go through the motions of scanning some items, but not actually do so. Those items can then be resold outside the store and it would be almost impossible to detect this happening.
The person at the door is there to check that every item has been rung up. Electronics stores do have a lot of small items that cost large amounts of money making the above scam easy to perpetrate. They may also catch extraordinarily stupid shoplifters but that isn't the goal.
So how re-assured would you feel if they had signs at the door saying the purpose is to catch crooked employees?
I do the complete opposite. When I buy CDs, I don't even listen to it on the CD. I rip it to MP3 and throw away the cover, song lyrics and other crud. The CDs are all stored on spindles that blank CD-R discs come on.
For what my housemate buys me on iTunes, I write it to audio cd, and then rip back into MP3.